Introduction

Each new medium born from technology advancement has great expectations when launched. But not all of them end up with mass adoption and remarkable success. Videotex, a medium with some features similar to the Internet newspapers and once a very promising new communication device, failed repeatedly in the 1980s (Ettema, 1989). The newspapers on the Internet were born with a much lower profile, though not free from the prophecy of media analysts (Bogart, 1994; Calamai, 1995; Kirsner, 1999; Riley & Keough, 1998; Robertson, 1997). Not as many great expectations were placed on them compared to other new media derived from technological innovations (Giles, 2000; Ingle, 1995). Yet in less than 6 years, the Internet newspapers not only survived, but also expanded exponentially. The Internet newspaper is a phenomenon along with the growth of the Internet.